Brazilian Studies Association - - BRASA
Panel: Historical and Cultural Issues in Brazilian Development
Comparing Wars: State National Recruitment and Social Resistance in
the Paraguayan and Civil Wars.
Vitor Izecksohn - - UFRJ
Atlanta, April 2002
Please, do not quote
The present article undertakes a comparative-historical analysis of war and
social cohesion in the United States and Brazil during the decade of 1860. It
compares the North-American Union enlistment crisis, whose main point was the
promulgation of the Enrollment Act in March 1863, with the Brazilian recruitment
crisis, whose main point of tension was the Decree 3383 from January 21, 1865.
Through this Decree, the Imperial government transferred soldiers from the
Brazilian National Guard to the Paraguayan front.
Situation 1: The United States, 1861-65
The Civil War was the most intense conflict faced by the American nation
during the 19th century. As a large multifront war, it required unprecedented levels
of mobilization, recruitment and training. It led to more American casualties than
almost all the twentieth century contests combined. Creating and enforcing a
national conscription system in a governmental tradition based on the preeminence
of states’ sovereignty raised constant problems for the administration and created
a paradox for its political leaders.1
The conflict demanded a state structure capable of coping with a vast and
integrated war effort, leading to spectacular processes of institutional change and
bureaucratic organization. These proceedings redefined national sovereignty
through such procedures as the nationalization of the government-citizen
relationship, the designation of provost marshals for the districts and finally by the
1
Created in 1852 as a consequence of the Kansas-Nebraska Ac the Republican Party resulted
from the fusion of the Whig, Know Nothing and Liberty parties. Republicans would govern
uninterruptedly the United States from 1861 to 1881. The election of Abraham Lincoln in November
1860 led to the separation of the Lower South, the creation of the Confederate States of America (in
February 1861), and outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861. John Ashworth, Slavery, Capitalism
and Politics in the Antebellum Republic. Vol. I, Commerce and Compromise, 1820-1850, pp. 289365.
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transformation of slaves into citizens, a process strongly controlled by the federal
government.2
The consequences of the Civil War would not be confined to the defeated
regions of the South. The struggle would bring unintended effects to most areas of
the Union. Some of these changes affected traditional assumptions concerning
such vital matters as “states rights,” conscription, personal liberty laws, the
centralization of national power, and the voluntary character and composition of the
army. They also reinforced the role of the Federal government as the main
recruiting agency of the armed forces. The emphasis on state’s rights was
progressively replaced by centralization, with the Federal government assuming
the main role in military affairs, fiscal policy and economic development.
The above changes affected the lives of the people of the loyal states in
many ways. They interfered with usual policy-making practices affecting the
relations between individuals and their communities. These transformations were
profound enough to affect the social basis of support given by communities to the
continuous efforts to feed and expand the army. As a consequence,
simultaneously with the struggle against the Confederates, there took place a
conflict over the identity the Union itself on the home front, a conflict Lincoln called
“the fire in the rear.”3
While much has been written about the economic transformations propelled
by the war in the North, less attention has been paid to the moral economy of
2
John Whiteclay Chambers, To Raise an Army. The Draft Comes to Modern America. New York,
Free Press, 1987, pp. 41-72.
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recruitment and its connections to the American social organization. How was the
control of recruitment transferred from the states to the federal government? What
kind of conflicts did that transfer generate? Under which conditions did cooperation
between local leaders and federal officers become possible? How did the local
population react to the growing intrusion of the central government into their lives?
Situation 2: Brazil, 1865-1870
The War of the Triple Alliance had a profound impact in the Brazilian
society. The war effort led to the creation of long lines of supply to support the
army in operations outside the country. This effort involved many distant Brazilian
provinces in the war effort, turning the mobilization into a national phenomenon.
The Imperial government committed a good amount of its attention and budget to
face the challenges posed by a kind of war unknown in South America. This
situation led even to the reorientation of the financial sectors to make possible the
feeding and supply of the growing military forces until the total defeat of the
Paraguayan army.4
As in the American Civil War, the conflict against Paraguay enabled a
collective and bureaucratic effort of the whole society and, as for the American Civil
War, this effort was achieved only slowly. A central question posed by the military
mobilization was the need to recruit a large number of soldiers. In symbolic and
concrete terms, the challenges brought by the mobilization were important because
they reminded Brazilian leaders of structural deficiencies in their country’s state-
3
The expression was used during a conversation with Charles Sumner in January 1863. Quotation
taken from James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom. The Civil War Era (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1980), P. 591.
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building process. Such deficiencies reinforced old fears about the precariousness
of the Brazilian social order. They also revealed the lack of bureaucratic
development and military expertise in the country. Finally, the war against small
Paraguay would create new tensions involving the control of the internal social
order, exposing the problems posed by disputes over the local control of the
recruitment and the politicization of military service. These problems had always
challenged the Army’s capacity, but this time, due to the rashness of the
international campaign, they revealed acute limitations in the capabilities of the
country, alarming the sectors responsible for Brazil’s defense to an unprecedented
degree. The raising of men and resources would be the Achilles heel of the
Brazilian government during these crucial years of its institutional development.
In site of the initial enthusiasm of the population, the military recruitment’s
central question during the campaign was the transfer of local forces to the front.
According to the Decree 602 from September 19, 1850, troops of the Brazilian
National Guard should help the national Army in case of rebellion or invasion of the
Imperial territory. These procedures were followed by the Imperial state in 1865,
when Paraguayan forces invaded the provinces of Rio Grande do Sul and Mato
Grosso. But the law was not clear about what should be done when the front
changed to the territory of another country or how long such cooperation should
endure. That was the situation after August 1865 when the theater of operations
was transferred to the Argentinean province of Misiones.
4
Many Brazilian city streets, squares, and neighborhoods were named in honor to episodes and
heroes from the War of Triple Alliance. Vitor Izecksohn, “O Cerne da Discórdia. A Guerra do
Paraguai e o Núcleo Profissional do Exército.” (M. A. Thesis, IUPERJ, 1992), pp. 1-27.
5
The fragility of the Brazilian military organization only became evident after
its defeat in the battle of Curupayti (September 22, 1866), where the allies (Brazil,
Argentina and Uruguay) lost around 4,000 troops. The defeat at Curupayti
paralyzed the campaign, creating an environment of great perplexity among
Brazilian troops. Such event only draw attention to a series of circumstances that
had been observed since the beginning of the war. Brazilian superiority in men
and means was not sufficient to determine the conflict’s outcome. All operations
were interrupted for seventeen months. During this period, Argentineans and
Uruguayans retreated (due to internal troubles), while the Brazilian government
worked desesperately on the home front to reinforce its army and follow up on the
campaign. The enormous number of casualties, due mainly to desertion and
diseases, intensified the need to reinforce troops and to pursue a longer campaign.
The erosion of the Alliance armies became evident in the reduction of troop
numbers, implying more urgent efforts for the recruitment of new contingents. The
terrible sanitary conditions and the lack of adequate food caused most casualties.
According to the testimony of Menenio Agrippa (pseudonymous of José Fernades
Pereira Jr.), of the 51 battalions that invaded Paraguay, only 14 were still
organized in 1867. Of 45,000 men, only half were ready for combat. But it would be
naive to believe that these problems only began with the interruption of the
campaign. Truly, the paralysis only accentuated circumstances that had been
building since the second half of 1865. While true enthusiasm was the hallmark of
the initial steps in Brazilian recruitment, resistance (individual or collective) was
always present and kept growing during the war. In many respects, the resistance
on the internal front was as serious as Paraguayan war efforts.
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The main problem was in the changes operated by the war over the
relations between the central government, local bosses and their protégés. Delays
at each step of the war made it impossible to regroup the existing army, increasing
the demand for new soldiers. Turning to its hinterlands, the Empire demanded
more manpower to fill the lacuna. Notwithstanding these efforts, the population was
no longer willing to contribute. Slowly, but progressively, Brazilians of all classes
and regions turned against recruitment and resisted government measures. There
were individual acts of insubordination, as well as collective actions, intended to
keep recruits and National Guards in their places of residence. The resulting
tensions between the center and periphery developed into the most acute situation
since the 1840’s.
Recent academic research has extensively demonstrated that the army
recruited personnel from the lower sectors of Brazilian society.5 The small Brazilian
army centered its recruiting actions on those who could not count on the protection
of an influential person or who had no godfather to exempt them from this hard
service. Vagrants, potential criminals, and jobless men were the main targets of the
“recrutadores.” For most of the 19th century, service in the army was considered to
be a brutal and dangerous activity, fit only for society’s undesirable individuals. In
the army, their conditions of life were regulated by the procedure of Count Lippe’s
Meznar, “The Ranks of the Poor,” Petter Beattie, “Transforming Enlisted Army Service in Brazil
1864-1948: Penal Servitude Versus Conscription and Changing Conceptions of Honor, Race, and
Nation,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Florida at Coral Gables, 1994). Hendrick Kraay, “The
Army in Bahia, Brazil, 1808-1889,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 1995),
especially chapter III, “The Enlisted Men,” pp. 255-305. Fernando Dores Costa, “Os Problemas do
Recrutamento Militar no Final do Século XVIII e as Questões da Construção do Estado e da
Nação,” in Análise Social, Vol. 30, no. 130, pp. 121-55. Fábio Faria Mendes, “O Tributo de Sangue:
Recrutamento Militar e Construção do Estado no Brasil Imperial, Tese de Doutorado, IUPERJ,
1997.
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regiments.6 Those unhappy persons who served in the army considered their fate
worse than that of slaves. Not only they, but their military chiefs also, thought that
fate a terrible one. General Cunha Mattos, a deputy at the Brazilian parliament,
well summarized these feelings in 1826, when he asserted that “the worst disgrace
in the entire universe is to be a recruit in Brazil. It is a real punishment; a common
soldier is considered a miserable slave.”7
During the Triple Alliance War, the expansion of government prerogatives in
Brazil interfered with another kind of market, that is, with established loyalties
which took the form of private contracts between planters and their clients. Such
state interference with traditional rituals of social control led the provincial
populations, especially those living in small villages and districts in the far interior,
to appeal for protection to local sources of power against the unreasonable
advance of the state. An explosion of local rebellions sought to push recruitment
agents out of villages and districts and restore previously existing conditions of
livelihood. No rebellion achieved the level of earlier secessionist movements, but
some of them seriously challenged the execution of governmental power. In this
6
Count Wilhelm de Shaumborg-Lippe was a disciple of Fredrick the Great who was commissioned
to reorganize the Portuguese Army during the Seven-year's war. His influence on the Portuguese
Army was strongly felt at the end of the 18th century, especially because he provided the
Portuguese army with its first penal code constituted by twenty-nine laws, eleven of which
prescribed capital punishment for aggravated crimes ranging from desertion to wartime mutiny.
Lippi was a loyal follower of Frederick The Great’s assertion that soldiers should fear their officers
“even more than any danger.” Frederick The Great quoted in Guibert Bullow, “From Dynastic to
National War.” In Edward Mead Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from
Machiavelli to Hitler (1943, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 49-76. On the Count of
Lippe’s influences over the Brazilian army see William, Count of Schaumburg-Lippe, Regulamento
Para o Exercício e Disciplina dos Regimentos da Infantaria dos Exércitos de Sua Magestade
Fidelíssima (Lisbon: Régia Officina Typografica, 1794). Manoel Joaquim do Nascimento e Silva,
Synopsis da Legislação Brasileira ate 1874 Cujo Conhecimento Mais Interessa aos Empregados
do Ministério da Guerra, 2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Typographia do Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 1874),
Vol. 2, p. 153, Beattie, “Transforming Enlisted Army Service ...,” pp. 42-3, and McBeth, “The
Politicians and the Generals…, “pp. 256-60.
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sense the moral economy of Brazilian populations opposed the state’s
universalistic intentions in a movement that rejected the progress of rationalization
in the name of tradition.
The wave of small revolts spread to all the country regions, increasing
the erosion to the war support. Some of them were supported by National Guard
commanders or had the assistance of other important local authorities, such as
judges, priests, or planters. These revolts expressed the disillusion of various
sectors with government agents’ interference with their private lives. This
interference lacked legitimacy in their eyes because it disrupted the local and
regional balance of forces. Partisans of deprived groups saw recruitment as just
another source of power exercised against themselves. As a consequence,
disputes over who would be designated eroded the National Guard’s position. In its
turn, the Guard revealed its lack of potential to support the country in the event of a
more intense kind of war. The Justice report from 1867 clearly recognized such
deficiencies, emphasizing that: “The [current war] experience confirmed the need
to reform the National Guard. This militia who was created to defend the order and
the public liberties is very far from its finality....”8
Some Considerations
In spite of diverging patterns of historical evolution, Brazil and the United
States each faced similar logistical problems during their major 19 th century wars.
These problems were linked to the lack of bureaucratic expertise and to the
7
Quoted in McBeth, “The Brazilian Recruit,” p. 81.
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incomplete development of national armies in each country. Despite differences in
political cultures, these two societies made similar efforts toward centralization,
extraction, and recruitment during their wars.
Both conflicts showed strategic and material similarities in the administration
of the war efforts. The wars produced internal conflict, opening a window to
alternative visions of national organization and social reform. They showed the
limits of the central states’ capacity to extract additional resources from their
societies, especially the problematic action of recruitment agents in the far interior.
Subsequent war efforts exacerbated problems of social cohesion and national
stability to an extent never before reached in the historical evolution of either
nation.
Emerging social conflicts in each case help us to understand the limits of
state action in these periods of national emergency, especially when the state, with
its centripetal nationalistic demands, confronted the local interests of individuals
and groups. Most of these conflicts centered on the extension of recruitment and
its consequences for social stability. Lincoln’s problems with his generals and the
instability of the Brazilian command in Paraguay illustrated this point very well.
Armed crowds in Brazilian interior as well as anti-draft riots in the United
States were perceived as a threat to progress and social stability. These threats
were more symbolic than real as it became clear during the two wars. They
reflected attitudes of despair in relation to changes in the ways of life of the
8
Ministério da Justiça - Relatório Apresentado a Assembléia Geral Legislativa na Primeira Sessão
da Décima Terceira Legislatura pelo Respectivo Ministro e Secretário de Estado Martim Francisco
Ribeiro de Andrada, Rio de Janeiro, Typografia do Correio Mercantil, 1867, p. 4.
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affected populations. There was no real risk to the social order. In spite of that,
protest contributed for changes in the formulation of recruitment policies in each
war. In Brazil they led to the formulation of new proposals about the organization of
the army, the introduction of a draft, and the gradual abolition of the National
Guard. In the US they led a growing intervention of the federal power in the South
as well as the birth of a national conception of citizenship whose implementation
was long and difficult.
In spite of the resemblances between the two cases, the American political
system was much more functional to the war effort. The Republican party forged a
consistent articulation between state and federal interests. In Brazil such an effort
created tensions that were not solved with the same efficiency by the party system,
eroding the Imperial regime.
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